Peace Studies Program, Professor Will celebrated at fundraising dinner

With affectionate puns – “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” – and tributes from alumni, colleagues and President Jim Doti, Wilkinson College of Humanities and Social Sciences celebrated Professor Don Will and the Peace Studies Program at Chapman University at a fund raising dinner held on the program’s behalf Wednesday evening.

Doti likened the Peace Studies Program at Chapman to “a central design in the middle” of a Turkish carpet and praised Will as one of the key people who shaped it. “That design is not yet complete. So I would like to leave you with these marching orders: Weaver will carry on,” he said.

The program’s graduates are among the university’s most accomplished students, he said, noting that two of last year’s Fulbright Scholars were Peace Studies students. He praised the program for its robust speaker series, which has hosted a varied roster of speakers from author and activist Cornell West to Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams, who led grass-roots peace activities in Northern Ireland.

“We’re an institution that studies peace in a very significant way,” Doti said. “You begin to realize the force of will of Don Will, pun intended on that one, when you realize the many speakers who have come to Chapman University, the peacemakers of the world who have visited this place and had an impact on our students,” Doti said.

Several of those students attended the dinner, including Dulcie Kugelman ’96, who along with her husband, Larry, founded the Peace Builders Fund to support Chapman students who study conflict resolution abroad and report their research at international conferences.

Such experiences complement classroom teaching, Kugelman said. But Will’s lectures were priceless, too, she said.

“At Chapman I learned about the different aspects contributing to conflict,” she said.

Former
Panther
editor Will Matthews ’04 recalled how Will, who holds the Delp-Wilkinson Chair in Peace Studies, was ever the teacher, even while being interviewed by novice reporters. Every interview was an opportunity for Will to “help them understand the global aspect of the story they were reporting on.”

But amidst the praises, there was also a cautionary call from Will himself that it may be time to fight for Peace Studies.

“The program … is entering a difficult transition at this time and needs your advocacy. Compared to smaller majors, we are understaffed and facing challenges,” he said.

Will argued that Peace Studies is interdisciplinary, true to the university’s mission of producing global citizens and has its roots in the values of the university’s founders, formalized when late Professor Emeritus Paul Delp ’28 and the late Trustee Harmon Wilkinson ’35 and his wife Nadine created the Delp-Wilkinson Peace Endowment, he said.

“This event is clearly about a lot more than just me,” he said.

“I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon. I’m going to do that weaving, Jim,” he said, echoing the president’s analogy. “But I really ask you all to be advocates of the program.”